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Stratus ftServer system delivers throughput plus availability for ATM/EFT

Texas is often thought of as a place where things are done in a big way, which certainly holds true for The Data Center, a division of Texas State Bank. The Data Center provides complete data processing to Texas State Bank and 26 independent banks statewide from sites in McAllen, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Houston. Its role as a profit-generating service bureau leads to constant growth in ATM and EFT volumes, including transactions at automated teller machines and debit transactions at merchants' point-of-sale terminals. Every day, The Data Center is responsible for processing between 50,000-100,000 transactions.

When this service bureau set out to consolidate its ATM/EFT processing onto a single system, its considerable workload drove the criteria for the project: the need to process increasing transaction volumes with absolute reliability and to accommodate an expanding clientele.

"Due to merger and acquisition activity by Texas State Bank, we had two different ATM/EFT systems at two different data centers. One was tied into a mainframe system that had limited functionality and the other was tied to a controller that the vendor planned to discontinue," explains Gomer Jones, senior vice president at The Data Center, TSB.

Another reason for the change was that the aging controller did not support a newer message protocol mandated by the PULSE Network, the EFT association to which The Data Center belongs.

Its goals of greater transaction processing functionality and dependability would lead The Data Center to consolidate on a hardware and software combination equal to the task. A fault-tolerant Stratus^® ftServer^® system and S2's OpeN/2^® software - both of which run in a standard Microsoft^® Windows^® operating system environment - were chosen for the job.

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Big job, manageable technology

Transaction processing software was The Data Center's first consideration, given its needs for specific functionality. Besides support for message protocols required by PULSE, The Data Center sought a software platform that was easily managed and would readily accommodate the addition of more terminals, card issuers, and transaction acquirers. The OpeN/2 product from S2 Systems, Inc. was selected after a thorough evaluation of several ATM/EFT software solutions. That the ATM/EFT platform needed to perform reliably was a given. Dependable transaction processing is not only a must for serving The Data Center's bank clients and their customers, but the PULSE network also assesses a financial penalty (as do other EFT associations) if a member falls below a set monthly threshold for transaction availability.

The IT staff at The Data Center was pleased when S2 Systems recommended the Stratus ftServer system to support the availability goal. Before then, high-availability clusters were the only uptime-protecting server design the service bureau had encountered in a Windows environment. "We had experience with clusters before, and we did not want to go that route again. The Stratus concept and its capability for redundancy were new to us," says Jones.

The hardware decision became easy because the Intel^® processor-based ftServer platform offered better availability than a cluster, while being affordable to own and straightforward to operate. The ftServer architecture safeguards uptime with built-in Continuous Processing^® features - including lockstep redundant hardware, failsafe system software, and ActiveServiceT capabilities - all integrated within the server. This enables standard Windows-based applications running on ftServer systems to immediately benefit from platform availability levels of 99.999% or higher. Applications don't have to be altered to take advantage of the server's fault tolerance. Nor does protecting reliability involve the special configuration and labor-intensive administration that goes with high-availability clusters.

Consolidating the ATM/EFT systems brought an additional bonus: operating and maintaining the new system is uncomplicated because The Data Center's staff is already accustomed to working with Windows-based servers. "Because the Stratus ftServer system runs in a Windows environment, we are able to leverage technical expertise that's plentiful throughout our staff. This is a big change from the special knowledge needed to work with the ATM/EFT controller that we replaced," comments Jones.

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End to throughput concerns

By installing OpeN/2 software and ftServer hardware, The Data Center also prevented a developing situation from escalating into a serious problem. The older EFT controller, in particular, was becoming hard-pressed to sustain transaction throughput during periods of high demand. The daily transaction load can easily double during weekends and holiday shopping, mostly because of peaks in debit activity. Jones explains how the throughput and availability of the ATM/EFT server are related. "The biggest benefits we see from the Stratus ftServer system are transaction throughput and 100% availability - that is, the system responds to every transaction received from the network," he observes.

In day-to-day operation, the extensive functionality of S2's OpeN/2 software has proven an ideal partner to the continuously available Stratus ftServer system. Transaction status is accessible in real time; for example, a bank calling to find out why a debit transaction was declined can now receive the answer while the cardholder is still present at a merchant's point-of-sale terminal.

Jones further notes the value of having customer support from both vendors. "S2 and Stratus have been very helpful to us in resolving any technical issues that have come up. We are very pleased with the support," he states.

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No boundaries on success

Consolidating onto the fault-tolerant server has removed the previous technology-imposed limits to the growth of the Data Center's ATM/EFT processing service. In addition to functionality, throughput, and availability, what The Data Center describes as the scalability of the OpeN/2 and ftServer platform is extremely important to its future plans.

"The projected throughput capacity of the system [currently an entry-level ftServer model] far exceeds the load we are seeing now," Jones says. This room to grow - in a platform that is affordable and manageable - is essential. Besides the increasing debit transactions that represent most of the system's workload, Texas State Bank has added ATMs through bank acquisitions, additional independent banks may sign up for service, and current clients continue to open new branches.

By choosing a reliable Stratus server equipped to handle all this change, The Data Center has positioned its ATM/EFT processing service to remain a Texas-sized success.

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